Overheard! Yes, too much!

These days it is not unusual to be minding your own business in a supermarket, or walking down the street, when your brain is suddenly jarred by voices off! People talking either into mobile phones or loudly about a minor problem that is, to them, momentarily very important.

Just recently I overheard this - "and then he rang and said he wanted one so I said, oh alright, yes, and then Helen got whiffed of it and called for one and then I......." and, of course she was gone! What this did to me was get me thinking as to what the "one" was. This is the trouble with having to listen in a mandatory way to other people's soundbites!

Some time ago I heard two young women talking loudly. As they approached, I heard "ooh, no, I wouldn't do that, not on a first date!". What wouldn't she do? It may not have been what we probably would think. Remember Tony Hancock's retort to an insufferable date "well you've had a fish and chip dinner, what more do you want?"

And finally, as they say somewhere, this mobile phone conversation, or at least the side of it that I was hearing. "Oh, I'm sorry, my dear, have I caught you in the bath?" Did I, and quite a few others on this train at the time, have to endure this auricular savagery? I had visions of this man's wife acting as Archimedes' model! Too much for anyone, I say!

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